Thank you very much,
Alberto, for not only that kind introduction but your and your
colleagues’ leadership of this important institution. It’s a
pleasure to be here at the Newseum. The
Newseum is a monument to
some of our most precious freedoms, and I’m grateful for this
opportunity to discuss how those freedoms apply to the challenges of
the 21st century.

Although I can’t see all of you because in settings like this, the
lights are in my eyes and you are in the dark, I know that there are
many friends and former colleagues. I wish to acknowledge Charles
Overby, the CEO of Freedom Forum here at the Newseum; Senator Edward
Kaufman and Senator Joe Lieberman, my former colleagues in the
Senate, both of whom worked for passage of the Voice Act, which
speaks to Congress’s and the American people’s commitment to
internet freedom, a commitment that crosses party lines and branches
of government.

Also, I’m told here as well are Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Ted
Kaufman, Representative Loretta Sanchez, many representatives of the
Diplomatic Corps, ambassadors, chargés, participants in our
International Visitor Leadership Program on internet freedom from
China, Colombia, Iran, and Lebanon, and Moldova. And I also want to
acknowledge Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute,
recently named to our Broadcasting Board of Governors and, of
course, instrumental in supporting the work on internet freedom that
the Aspen Institute has been doing.

This is an important speech on a very important subject. But before
I begin, I want to just speak briefly about Haiti, because during
the last eight days, the people of Haiti and the people of the world
have joined together to deal with a tragedy of staggering
proportions. Our hemisphere has seen its share of hardship, but
there are few precedents for the situation we’re facing in
Port-au-Prince. Communication networks have played a critical role
in our response. They were, of course, decimated and in many places
totally destroyed. And in the hours after the quake, we worked with
partners in the private sector; first, to set up the text “HAITI”
campaign so that mobile phone users in the United States could
donate to relief efforts via text messages. That initiative has been
a showcase for the generosity of the American people, and thus far,
it’s raised over $25 million for recovery efforts.

Information networks have also played a critical role on the ground.
When I was with President Preval in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, one
of his top priorities was to try to get communication up and going.
The government couldn’t talk to each other, what was left of it, and
NGOs, our civilian leadership, our military leadership were severely
impacted. The technology community has set up interactive maps to
help us identify needs and target resources. And on Monday, a
seven-year-old girl and two women were pulled from the rubble of a
collapsed supermarket by an American search-and-rescue team after
they sent a text message calling for help. Now, these examples are
manifestations of a much broader phenomenon.

The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system
for our planet. When something happens in Haiti or Hunan, the rest
of us learn about it in real time – from real people. And we can
respond in real time as well. Americans eager to help in the
aftermath of a disaster and the girl trapped in the supermarket are
connected in ways that were not even imagined a year ago, even a
generation ago. That same principle applies to almost all of
humanity today. As we sit here, any of you – or maybe more likely,
any of our children – can take out the tools that many carry every
day and transmit this discussion to billions across the world.

Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are
more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in
history. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks
are helping people discover new facts and making governments more
accountable.

During his visit to China in November, for example, President Obama
held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the
importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent
in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely
access information, and said that the more freely information flows,
the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to
information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable,
generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship. The
United States belief in that ground truth is what brings me here
today.

Because amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also
recognize that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing.
These tools are also being exploited to undermine human progress and
political rights. Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or
machine guns, or nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy
it, modern information networks and the technologies they support
can be harnessed for good or for ill. The same networks that help
organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to spew hatred
and incite violence against the innocent. And technologies with the
potential to open up access to government and promote transparency
can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human
rights.

In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of
information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their
censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social
networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt,
30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group,
Bassem Samir, who is thankfully no longer in prison, is with us
today. So while it is clear that the spread of these technologies is
transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation
will affect the human rights and the human welfare of the world’s
population.

On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for
freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a
single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge
and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information
infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. Now, this
challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free
exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words
of the First Amendment to our Constitution are carved in 50 tons of
Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation
of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four
Freedoms speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a
cavalcade of crises and a crisis of confidence. But the vision of a
world in which all people enjoyed freedom of expression, freedom of
worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear transcended the
troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes, Eleanor
Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a
lodestar to every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us,
and enabling us to move forward in the face of uncertainty.

So as technology hurtles forward, we must think back to that legacy.
We need to synchronize our technological progress with our
principles. In accepting the Nobel Prize, President Obama spoke
about the need to build a world in which peace rests on the inherent
rights and dignities of every individual. And in my speech on human
rights at Georgetown a few days later, I talked about how we must
find ways to make human rights a reality. Today, we find an urgent
need to protect these freedoms on the digital frontiers of the 21st
century.

There are many other networks in the world. Some aid in the movement
of people or resources, and some facilitate exchanges between
individuals with the same work or interests. But the internet is a
network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And
that’s why we believe it’s critical that its users are assured
certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them.
This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go
into the town square and criticize their government without fear of
retribution. Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have
opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets
for censorship.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working
furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history
itself has already condemned these tactics. Two months ago, I was in
Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall. The leaders gathered at that ceremony paid tribute to the
courageous men and women on the far side of that barrier who made
the case against oppression by circulating small pamphlets called
samizdat. Now, these leaflets questioned the claims and intentions
of dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc and many people paid dearly for
distributing them. But their words helped pierce the concrete and
concertina wire of the Iron Curtain.

The Berlin Wall symbolized a world divided and it defined an entire
era. Today, remnants of that wall sit inside this museum where they
belong, and the new iconic infrastructure of our age is the
internet. Instead of division, it stands for connection. But even as
networks spread to nations around the globe, virtual walls are
cropping up in place of visible walls.

Some countries have
erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing
portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and
phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy
of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These
actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which
tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new
information curtain is descending across much of the world. And
beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the
samizdat of our day.

As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting
independent thinkers who use these tools. In the demonstrations that
followed Iran’s presidential elections, grainy cell phone footage of
a young woman’s bloody murder provided a digital indictment of the
government’s brutality. We’ve seen reports that when Iranians living
overseas posted online criticism of their nation’s leaders, their
family members in Iran were singled out for retribution. And despite
an intense campaign of government intimidation, brave citizen
journalists in Iran continue using technology to show the world and
their fellow citizens what is happening inside their country. In
speaking out on behalf of their own human rights, the Iranian people
have inspired the world. And their courage is redefining how
technology is used to spread truth and expose injustice.

Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We
do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the
agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to
promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And
hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race,
religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible.
It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing
challenges that the international community must confront together.
And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those
who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen
intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their
real world identities. But these challenges must not become an
excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and
privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political
purposes.

The freedom of expression may be the most obvious freedom to face
challenges with the spread of new technologies, but it is not the
only one. The freedom of worship usually involves the rights of
individuals to commune or not commune with their Creator. And that’s
one channel of communication that does not rely on technology. But
the freedom of worship also speaks to the universal right to come
together with those who share your values and vision for humanity.
In our history, those gatherings often took place in churches,
synagogues, mosques and temples. Today, they may also take place on
line.

The internet can help bridge divides between people of different
faiths. As the President said in Cairo, freedom of religion is
central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look
for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous
promise. We’ve already begun connecting students in the United
States with young people in Muslim communities around the world to
discuss global challenges. And we will continue using this tool to
foster discussion between individuals from different religious
communities.

Some nations, however, have co-opted the internet as a tool to
target and silence people of faith. Last year, for example, in Saudi
Arabia, a man spent months in prison for blogging about
Christianity. And a Harvard study found that the Saudi Government
blocked many web pages about Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and
even Islam. Countries including Vietnam and China employed similar
tactics to restrict access to religious information.

Now, just as these technologies must not be used to punish peaceful
political speech, they must also not be used to persecute or silence
religious minorities. Now, prayers will always travel on higher
networks. But connection technologies like the internet and social
networking sites should enhance individuals’ ability to worship as
they see fit, come together with people of their own faith, and
learn more about the beliefs of others. We must work to advance the
freedom of worship online just as we do in other areas of life.

There are, of course, hundreds of millions of people living without
the benefits of these technologies. In our world, as I’ve said many
times, talent may be distributed universally, but opportunity is
not. And we know from long experience that promoting social and
economic development in countries where people lack access to
knowledge, markets, capital, and opportunity can be frustrating and
sometimes futile work. In this context, the internet can serve as a
great equalizer. By providing people with access to knowledge and
potential markets, networks can create opportunities where none
exist.

Over the last year, I’ve seen this firsthand in Kenya, where farmers
have seen their income grow by as much as 30 percent since they
started using mobile banking technology; in Bangladesh, where more
than 300,000 people have signed up to learn English on their mobile
phones; and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women entrepreneurs use the
internet to get access to microcredit loans and connect themselves
to global markets.

Now, these examples of progress can be replicated in the lives of
the billion people at the bottom of the world’s economic ladder. In
many cases, the internet, mobile phones, and other connection
technologies can do for economic growth what the Green Revolution
did for agriculture. You can now generate significant yields from
very modest inputs. And one World Bank study found that in a typical
developing country, a 10 percent increase in the penetration rate
for mobile phones led to an almost 1 percent increase in per capita
GDP. To just put this into context, for India, that would translate
into almost $10 billion a year.

A connection to global information networks is like an on-ramp to
modernity. In the early years of these technologies, many believed
that they would divide the world between haves and have-nots. But
that hasn’t happened. There are 4 billion cell phones in use today.
Many of them are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers,
and others who’ve historically lacked access to education and
opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and
we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and
give them a freedom from want.

Now, we have every
reason to be hopeful about what people can accomplish when they
leverage communication networks and connection technologies to
achieve progress. But make no mistake – some are and will continue
to use global information networks for darker purposes. Violent
extremists, criminal cartels, sexual predators, and authoritarian
governments all seek to exploit these global networks. Just as
terrorists have taken advantage of the openness of our societies to
carry out their plots, violent extremists use the internet to
radicalize and intimidate. As we work to advance freedoms, we must
also work against those who use communication networks as tools of
disruption and fear.

Governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at
the core of their national security and economic prosperity are safe
and resilient. Now this is about more than petty hackers who deface
websites. Our ability to bank online, use electronic commerce, and
safeguard billions of dollars in intellectual property are all at
stake if we cannot rely on the security of our information networks.

Disruptions in these systems demand a coordinated response by all
governments, the private sector, and the international community. We
need more tools to help law enforcement agencies cooperate across
jurisdictions when criminal hackers and organized crime syndicates
attack networks for financial gain. The same is true when social
ills such as child pornography and the exploitation of trafficked
women and girls online is there for the world to see and for those
who exploit these people to make a profit. We applaud efforts such
as the Council on Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime that facilitate
international cooperation in prosecuting such offenses. And we wish
to redouble our efforts.

We have taken steps as a government, and as a Department, to find
diplomatic solutions to strengthen global cyber security. We have a
lot of people in the State Department working on this. They’ve
joined together, and we created two years ago an office to
coordinate foreign policy in cyberspace. We’ve worked to address
this challenge at the UN and in other multilateral forums and to put
cyber security on the world’s agenda. And President Obama has just
appointed a new national cyberspace policy coordinator who will help
us work even more closely to ensure that everyone’s networks stay
free, secure, and reliable.

States, terrorists, and those who would act as their proxies must
know that the United States will protect our networks. Those who
disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other
pose a threat to our economy, our government, and our civil society.
Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face
consequences and international condemnation. In an
internet-connected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be
an attack on all. And by reinforcing that message, we can create
norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global
networked commons.

The final freedom, one
that was probably inherent in what both President and Mrs. Roosevelt
thought about and wrote about all those years ago, is one that flows
from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect – the
idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to
the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect
is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows
individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate.
Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock
star to have a huge impact on society.

The largest public
response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai was launched by a
13-year-old boy. He used social networks to organize blood drives
and a massive interfaith book of condolence. In Colombia, an
unemployed engineer brought together more than 12 million people in
190 cities around the world to demonstrate against the FARC
terrorist movement. The protests were the largest antiterrorist
demonstrations in history. And in the weeks that followed, the FARC
saw more demobilizations and desertions than it had during a decade
of military action. And in Mexico, a single email from a private
citizen who was fed up with drug-related violence snowballed into
huge demonstrations in all of the country’s 32 states. In Mexico
City alone, 150,000 people took to the streets in protest. So the
internet can help humanity push back against those who promote
violence and crime and extremism.
In Iran and Moldova and other countries, online organizing has been
a critical tool for advancing democracy and enabling citizens to
protest suspicious election results. And even in established
democracies like the United States, we’ve seen the power of these
tools to change history. Some of you may still remember the 2008
presidential election here. (Laughter.)

The freedom to connect
to these technologies can help transform societies, but it is also
critically important to individuals. I was recently moved by the
story of a doctor – and I won’t tell you what country he was from –
who was desperately trying to diagnose his daughter’s rare medical
condition. He consulted with two dozen specialists, but he still
didn’t have an answer. But he finally identified the condition, and
found a cure, by using an internet search engine. That’s one of the
reasons why unfettered access to search engine technology is so
important in individuals’ lives.

Now, the principles I’ve
outlined today will guide our approach in addressing the issue of
internet freedom and the use of these technologies. And I want to
speak about how we apply them in practice. The United States is
committed to devoting the diplomatic, economic, and technological
resources necessary to advance these freedoms. We are a nation made
up of immigrants from every country and every interest that spans
the globe. Our foreign policy is premised on the idea that no
country more than America stands to benefit when there is
cooperation among peoples and states. And no country shoulders a
heavier burden when conflict and misunderstanding drive nations
apart. So we are well placed to seize the opportunities that come
with interconnectivity. And as the birthplace for so many of these
technologies, including the internet itself, we have a
responsibility to see them used for good. To do that, we need to
develop our capacity for what we call, at the State Department, 21st
century statecraft.

Realigning our policies
and our priorities will not be easy. But adjusting to new technology
rarely is. When the telegraph was introduced, it was a source of
great anxiety for many in the diplomatic community, where the
prospect of receiving daily instructions from capitals was not
entirely welcome. But just as our diplomats eventually mastered the
telegraph, they are doing the same to harness the potential of these
new tools as well.

And I’m proud that the
State Department is already working in more than 40 countries to
help individuals silenced by oppressive governments. We are making
this issue a priority at the United Nations as well, and we’re
including internet freedom as a component in the first resolution we
introduced after returning to the United Nations Human Rights
Council.

We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable
citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by
circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing
funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get
to the people who need them in local languages, and with the
training they need to access the internet safely. The United States
has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on
implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as
possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the
internet should understand that our government is committed to
helping promote internet freedom.

We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them
to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and
epidemics, to build global support for President Obama’s goal of a
world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic
development that lifts the people at the bottom up.

That’s why today I’m announcing that over the next year, we will
work with partners in industry, academia, and nongovernmental
organizations to establish a standing effort that will harness the
power of connection technologies and apply them to our diplomatic
goals. By relying on mobile phones, mapping applications, and other
new tools, we can empower citizens and leverage our traditional
diplomacy. We can address deficiencies in the current market for
innovation.

Let me give you one example. Let’s say I want to create a mobile
phone application that would allow people to rate government
ministries, including ours, on their responsiveness and efficiency
and also to ferret out and report corruption. The hardware required
to make this idea work is already in the hands of billions of
potential users. And the software involved would be relatively
inexpensive to develop and deploy.

If people took advantage of this tool, it would help us target our
foreign assistance spending, improve lives, and encourage foreign
investment in countries with responsible governments. However, right
now, mobile application developers have no financial assistance to
pursue that project on their own, and the State Department currently
lacks a mechanism to make it happen. But this initiative should help
resolve that problem and provide long-term dividends from modest
investments in innovation. We’re going to work with experts to find
the best structure for this venture, and we’ll need the talent and
resources of technology companies and nonprofits in order to get the
best results most quickly. So for those of you in the room who have
this kind of talent, expertise, please consider yourselves invited
to help us.

In the meantime, there are companies, individuals, and institutions
working on ideas and applications that could already advance our
diplomatic and development objectives. And the State Department will
be launching an innovation competition to give this work an
immediate boost. We’ll be asking Americans to send us their best
ideas for applications and technologies that help break down
language barriers, overcome illiteracy, connect people to the
services and information they need. Microsoft, for example, has
already developed a prototype for a digital doctor that could help
provide medical care in isolated rural communities. We want to see
more ideas like that. And we’ll work with the winners of the
competition and provide grants to help build their ideas to scale.

Now, these new initiatives will supplement a great deal of important
work we’ve already done over this past year. In the service of our
diplomatic and diplomacy objectives, I assembled a talented and
experienced team to lead our 21st century statecraft efforts. This
team has traveled the world helping governments and groups leverage
the benefits of connection technologies. They have stood up a Civil
Society 2.0 Initiative to help grassroots organizations enter the
digital age. They are putting in place a program in Mexico to help
combat drug-related violence by allowing people to make untracked
reports to reliable sources to avoid having retribution visited
against them. They brought mobile banking to Afghanistan and are now
pursuing the same effort in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In
Pakistan, they created the first-ever social mobile network, called
Our Voice, that has already produced tens of millions of messages
and connected young Pakistanis who want to stand up to violent
extremism.

In a short span, we have taken significant strides to translate the
promise of these technologies into results that make a difference.
But there is still so much more to be done. And as we work together
with the private sector and foreign governments to deploy the tools
of 21st century statecraft, we have to remember our shared
responsibility to safeguard the freedoms that I’ve talked about
today. We feel strongly that principles like information freedom
aren’t just good policy, not just somehow connected to our national
values, but they are universal and they’re also good for business.

To use market terminology, a publicly listed company in Tunisia or
Vietnam that operates in an environment of censorship will always
trade at a discount relative to an identical firm in a free society.
If corporate decision makers don’t have access to global sources of
news and information, investors will have less confidence in their
decisions over the long term. Countries that censor news and
information must recognize that from an economic standpoint, there
is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial
speech. If businesses in your nations are denied access to either
type of information, it will inevitably impact on growth.

Increasingly, U.S. companies are making the issue of internet and
information freedom a greater consideration in their business
decisions. I hope that their competitors and foreign governments
will pay close attention to this trend. The most recent situation
involving Google has attracted a great deal of interest. And we look
to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber
intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also
look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.

The internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in
China, and it is fabulous. There are so many people in China now
online. But countries that restrict free access to information or
violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves
off from the progress of the next century. Now, the United States
and China have different views on this issue, and we intend to
address those differences candidly and consistently in the context
of our positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship.

Now, ultimately, this issue isn’t just about information freedom; it
is about what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will
inhabit. It’s about whether we live on a planet with one internet,
one global community, and a common body of knowledge that benefits
and unites us all, or a fragmented planet in which access to
information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the
whims of censors.

Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a
foundation for global progress. Historically, asymmetrical access to
information is one of the leading causes of interstate conflict.
When we face serious disputes or dangerous incidents, it’s critical
that people on both sides of the problem have access to the same set
of facts and opinions.

As it stands, Americans can consider information presented by
foreign governments. We do not block your attempts to communicate
with the people in the United States. But citizens in societies that
practice censorship lack exposure to outside views. In North Korea,
for example, the government has tried to completely isolate its
citizens from outside opinions. This lopsided access to information
increases both the likelihood of conflict and the probability that
small disagreements could escalate. So I hope that responsible
governments with an interest in global stability will work with us
to address such imbalances.

For companies, this issue is about more than claiming the moral high
ground. It really comes down to the trust between firms and their
customers. Consumers everywhere want to have confidence that the
internet companies they rely on will provide comprehensive search
results and act as responsible stewards of their own personal
information. Firms that earn that confidence of those countries and
basically provide that kind of service will prosper in the global
marketplace. I really believe that those who lose that confidence of
their customers will eventually lose customers. No matter where you
live, people want to believe that what they put into the internet is
not going to be used against them.

And censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from
anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a
principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I’m
confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow
those principles.

Now, we are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task Force as
a forum for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world,
and we are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in
challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and
surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help
safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten
to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not
simply what’s a quick profit.

We’re also encouraged by the work that’s being done through the
Global Network Initiative, a voluntary effort by technology
companies who are working with nongovernmental organizations,
academic experts, and social investment funds to respond to
government requests for censorship. The initiative goes beyond mere
statements of principles and establishes mechanisms to promote real
accountability and transparency. As part of our commitment to
support responsible private sector engagement on information
freedom, the State Department will be convening a high-level meeting
next month co-chaired by Under Secretaries Robert Hormats and Maria
Otero to bring together firms that provide network services for
talks about internet freedom, because we want to have a partnership
in addressing this 21st century challenge.

Now, pursuing the freedoms I’ve talked about today is, I believe,
the right thing to do. But I also believe it’s the smart thing to
do. By advancing this agenda, we align our principles, our economic
goals, and our strategic priorities. We need to work toward a world
in which access to networks and information brings people closer
together and expands the definition of the global community. Given
the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing, we need people around
the world to pool their knowledge and creativity to help rebuild the
global economy, to protect our environment, to defeat violent
extremism, and build a future in which every human being can live up
to and realize his or her God-given potential.

So let me close by asking you to remember the little girl who was
pulled from the rubble on Monday in Port-au-Prince. She’s alive, she
was reunited with her family, she will have the chance to grow up
because these networks took a voice that was buried and spread it to
the world. No nation, no group, no individual should stay buried in
the rubble of oppression. We cannot stand by while people are
separated from the human family by walls of censorship. And we
cannot be silent about these issues simply because we cannot hear
the cries.

So let us recommit ourselves to this cause. Let us make these
technologies a force for real progress the world over. And let us go
forward together to champion these freedoms for our time, for our
young people who deserve every opportunity we can give them.